Why Are Thai Letters So Hard To Read?

[Richard W]

Hopefully it will enable you to understand why this stuff is not "USA", but the Thai equivalent of "Breeze":

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And presumably you get bonus points if you can read the word below as 'Excel'! That ซ is really hard to tell from a ช.

There's a lot of good practice material in the supermarket labels, for both Farangs and Thais.

P.S. Just upgraded firefox from 1.0 to 1.0.2, and it's still working fine under Windows XP.

Edited March 26, 2005 by Richard W

[RDN]

...And presumably you get bonus points if you can read the word below as 'Excel'!  That ซ is really hard to tell from a ช.

There's a lot of good practice material in the supermarket labels, for both Farangs and Thais.

P.S. Just upgraded firefox from 1.0 to 1.0.2, and it's still working fine under Windows XP.

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yes, that minute little notch on the top of the left line is the clue - but I didn't get the points I'm afraid (although I do recall my girlfriend telling me that that was what it says).

Another good one is "Free" - you see it everywhere: ฟืร (I did that from memory, so I might have got it wrong).

Back to the encoding subject (was that in another thread?), my Outlook Express did NOT display the Thai characters this time, just the ampersand , hash, number codes BUT my Firefox DID display them correctly EVEN THOUGH it was set to Western ISO 8859-11. So I guess you entered typed post with that encoding?

[Richard W]

Another good one is "Free" - you see it everywhere:  ฟืร (I did that  from memory, so I might have got it wrong).

Yes, it's ฟรี 'at no extra charge'.

Back to the encoding subject (was that in another thread?), my Outlook Express did NOT display the Thai characters this time, just the ampersand , hash, number codes BUT my Firefox DID display them correctly EVEN THOUGH it was set to Western ISO 8859-11. So I guess you entered typed post with that encoding?

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I take it you mean Western ISO 8859-1. ISO 8859-11 is the Thai encoding!

I have never changed the encoding to enter Thai text at Thaivisa, be it via Firefox or Internet Explorer I though I'd better check that the capability hadn't suddenly disapeared with Firefox 1.02 (or 1.01). It hasn't; it's still there.

In HTML, the encoding defines how the sequence of bytes is to be interpreted. When looking at the interpretation of the bytes, an ampersand (outside of tags, at least) introduces a special sequence that is to be interpreted as some other character. At this point, encoding has largely ceased to matter; the meaning of such sequences is unrelated to the encoding.

If new postings are being e-mailed to you, it's a bit of a bug if such escape sequences are being sent to you. It partly depends on whether the e-mail is being sent to you in HTML format; if sent as plain text, UTF-8 format needs to be used to send arbitrary text. I doubt this website provides any special treatment for Thai - I have entered Lao in the past. I don't know if there even is a Lao encoding - TIS-620 with knobs on would make sense, as Thai and Lao Unicode encodings differ by 0x80, with no clashes that I am aware of, unless you want to count the handling of ย.

Am I deluded, or are the consonants in some shop signs effectively in the Lao script?

Edited March 26, 2005 by Richard W

[RDN]

Another good one is "Free" - you see it everywhere:  ฟืร (I did that  from memory, so I might have got it wrong).

Yes, it's ฟรี 'at no extra charge'.

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Oops, I put the "ee" above the wrong consonant. (So much easier to read Thai than to write it ). But I thought that ฟรี was simply stolen from the English word "Free". Just to make sure that I am understanding you correctly, are you saying that the Thai word ฟรี means "at no extra charge" and coincidentally sounds exactly the same as the English equivalent?

Back to the encoding subject (was that in another thread?), my Outlook Express did NOT display the Thai characters this time, just the ampersand , hash, number codes BUT my Firefox DID display them correctly EVEN THOUGH it was set to Western ISO 8859-11. So I guess you entered typed post with that encoding?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I take it you mean Western ISO 8859-1. ISO 8859-11 is the Thai encoding!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry - yes I meant 8859-1. Sometimes my keyboardd bouncess

I have never changed the encoding to enter Thai text at Thaivisa, be it via Firefox or Internet Explorer  I though I'd better check that the capability hadn't suddenly disapeared with Firefox 1.02 (or 1.01).  It hasn't; it's still there.

In HTML, the encoding defines how the sequence of bytes is to be interpreted.  When looking at the interpretation of the bytes, an ampersand (outside of tags, at least) introduces a special sequence that is to be interpreted as some other character.  At this point, encoding has largely ceased to matter; the meaning of such sequences is unrelated to the encoding.

If new postings are being e-mailed to you, it's a bit of a bug if such escape sequences are being sent to you.  It partly depends on whether the e-mail is being sent to you in HTML format; if sent as plain text, UTF-8 format needs to be used to send arbitrary text.  I doubt this website provides any special treatment for Thai - I have entered Lao in the past.  I don't know if there even is a Lao encoding - TIS-620 with knobs on would make sense, as Thai and Lao Unicode encodings differ by 0x80, with no clashes that I am aware of, unless you want to count the handling of ย.

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This is very strange and I promise I will do some checks on my email encoding soon - just haven't found the time yet .

Am I deluded, or are the consonants in some shop signs effectively in the Lao script?

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I need to learn the Thai ones first - gives us a chance!

[IvanLaw]

ifwedidnotleavegapsyouwouldgetusedtoiteventually

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O BUM,

Wish I wasn’t Dyslexic.

I have tried for 5 years to learn Thai, Think I will just have to stick with “THAIGRIT”.

At least the Girlfriends family can almost understand me.

[Richard W]

ifwedidnotleavegapsyouwouldgetusedtoiteventually

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

O BUM,

Wish I wasn’t Dyslexic.

I have tried for 5 years to learn Thai, Think I will just have to stick with “THAIGRIT”.

At least the Girlfriends family can almost understand me.

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If it's any consolation, a lot of Thai handwriting leaves gaps between words, sometimes between syllables. The gaps within words can be confusing; it took me quite a while to work out that แม แดม meant 'madam', which maids in soaps use rather than the คุณนาย some textbooks would lead you to expect.

For printed text you may write on, the problem is made a lot easier by the preposed vowels, which start a syllable, and sara a (ะ) and diphthongs made by vowel symbol plus ว, which terminate a syllable. Mark the obvious syllable divisions with vertical lines. Again the loan words cause problems - it can take a little while before it suddenly clicks that คอม พิว เตอร์ is 'computer' rather than a puzzling sequence of native words. With practice you start to recognise the common words as units, and the problem recedes.

[Richard W]

ops, I put the "ee" above the wrong consonant. (So much easier to read Thai than to write it ). But  I thought that ฟรี was simply stolen from the English word "Free". Just to make sure that I am understanding you correctly, are you saying that the Thai word ฟรี means "at no extra charge" and coincidentally sounds exactly the same as the English equivalent? 

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I'm sure it is the English word - standard accounts of Thai phonology do not include /fr/ as a permissible initial cluster, and /f/ is foreign to Sanskrit, Pali and Khmer. (Vedic visargas and French loans are not relevant.) I was partly making the point that it does not seem to carry any idea of 'liberty', partly that you have to spend money to get something that is 'ฟรี'. The second point is not entirely true; I have heard it used to to me to mean 'at no charge'. I think I also heard it used thus between Thais when a car mechanic was not going to charge my wife's brother-in-law when we stopped en route to have the air conditioning fan fixed. It had turned out to be a simple problem; all the mechanic had had to do, once he got access, was to take a dead, partly skinned mouse out of the fan!

Edited March 27, 2005 by Richard W

[RDN]

... I was partly making the point that it does not seem to carry any idea of 'liberty', partly that you have to spend money to get something that is 'ฟรี'.  ...

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Of course, sorry, I was being thick! I just did a check here http://www.tfd.com/Free and there are so many meanings of "free" that I hadn't considered.